Live free or die second.., p.34
Live Free or Die, Second Edition, page 34
“You’re being mysterious again,” Steve said.
“Confidential,” Tyler said. “Really. It’s very tightly held. And I’m trying to keep it that way. Hey, we’re starting on a new mining project.”
“You can’t extract everything from Connie,” Steve said, shaking his head. “And you’re starting a new one?”
“These things take a while to heat,” Tyler said, shrugging. “Especially this one. It’s a six-kilometer asteroid in the belt.”
“That’s going to take some power,” Steve said.
“We’re trying a slightly different take,” Tyler said. “Turns out there’s some differentiation to them. So we stabilized this one and we’re doing a laser drill to the interior.”
“You’re drilling into the interior of a six-kilometer diameter asteroid?” Steve said, blinking. “You really are thinking big. What are you going to do, blow it up?”
“Nah,” Tyler said. “There’s better stuff to do with it.”
“Dinner is served,” Dr. Chu said, entering the room followed by a group of waiters. “Mind if I join you? Since I fixed it?”
“Conrad!” Steve said. “I’m glad to see you survived.”
“Many friends did not,” Dr. Chu said, picking up the bottle and pouring himself a drink. “Absent companions.”
“Absent companions,” Tyler and Steve said.
“To the future,” Steve said.
“I’ll drink to that,” Tyler replied. “To a better, brighter, bigger future.”
TWO
“I’m doing this,” Dr. Nathan Bell said. The huge “small planetary object” specialist was handling the drilling project on Troy. “I’m fully involved in the project. I’m working the problems, and they haven’t been small. Nothing about this has been small. And I think you’re insane.”
“How’s the drill rig working?” Tyler asked.
The “drill rig” was a complex of mirrors physically connected to asteroid 3159. The main belt asteroid was an eight-kilometer long, five-kilometer wide mass of virtually solid nickel iron. Sixteen BDA mirrors were pointing “out” to a VSA perched over the drill point on thin nickel-iron rods. The BDA mirrors captured a series of beams off the SAPL to supply sixty-four megawatts of power to the drill beam. The VSA, since the drilling was taking place in shadow, could easily manage the waste heat of a mere sixty-four megawatts.
Clearing the drill hole had been a problem at first. A good bit of the nickel iron was heated to vaporization by the beam, but most of it just sort of slumped out of the hole. A tug had been collecting it and setting it to the side for the last two months. There was now a minor planetary body circling the minor planetary body.
Also circling the minor planetary body was a small, leased freighter. It had been refitted to function as a construction site management ship. It wasn’t the most comfortable place in the system, but Tyler had done his best. And it had a good cook and great food. It had to have something going for it; the crew had been informed they were staying aboard until they were done with the first phase.
Naturally, it had been renamed Trojan Horse.
“Pretty well, actually,” Nathan said. “The biggest problem has been routing it out.”
One of the problems was that they needed a big hole for the overall plan. So the beam had to continuously track around the hole, opening it up.
“We’re only about two hundred meters down,” Dr. Bell said. “Which, given what we’re working with, is amazing. And the rate has increased as we’ve been figuring out the problems. We should get to the center on schedule in four months.”
“I hate waiting,” Tyler said.
“Tyler, this project is insanely huge,” Dr. Bell said. “And I don’t think that most of the steps are going to work nearly as well as we’ve planned. Do you know how hard it is to steer a comet?”
“It’s a big ball of ice,” Tyler said. “Use ice hooks?”
“We got the bombs attached,” Nathan said, sighing. “We adjusted the course. Sort of. It’s sort of headed this way. Should arrive in three months. At that point, we somehow have to get a hundred-meter-wide ball of ice to stop exactly where we want it. Too far away and we’re going to be transferring ice for the next decade. Too close is when it hits the array. This thing is massy enough it has a noticeable gravitational field. If the comet stops next to it, we’re going to have an icy coating to work with. But even if we get it to the precise spot we want, we still have to somehow shove it down that little bitty hole and to the center. In space! And unless you want us to wait until this thing cools, we’re going to be dealing with vaporizing ice as we’re doing the stuffing!”
“Ice hooks,” Tyler said, shrugging. “We’re going to do it. We’ll figure it out.”
“What’s this ‘we,’ short man?” Nathan said, chuckling. “You seriously have a Napoleon complex, don’t you? Again, I’m fully involved in this project. Everybody thinks it’s cool as hell. Also insane as hell.”
“The SAPL is vulnerable,” Tyler said. “We can’t depend on it being able to protect us against a cunning enough enemy. We are going to secure the Solar System. And Troy is the first step.”
“So how are we going to stuff the comet in the hole?” Dr. Bell said.
“Wrong way around,” Tyler said. “Put a tractor system at the bottom. Then pull the comet in. Even if it vaporizes, you’re still pulling the material in.”
“We’re going to lose the tractor system,” Nathan said. “But that…might just work.”
“See?” Tyler said. “Ice hooks.”
* * *
“I thought you were mining this,” Steve said, looking at the comet parked next to the asteroid. “What’s with the comet? Mining for volatiles?”
“Sort of,” Tyler said, grinning. He admitted he couldn’t keep a secret worth a damn. But it was Steve. And Mathilda. He really liked both of them, and if he could find a girl half as pretty and smart as Mathilda, he thought he might just give marriage a shot again. “And we’re selling some of the stuff we’ve melted out. Not all, but enough to pay for the project. Fortunately.”
“We’ve drilled out a five-meter-wide, two-and-a-half-kilometer-deep hole in the asteroid,” Dr. Bell said. “We’ve just put a self-powered tractor system at the bottom of the hole. Now we’re going to suck the comet into the hole.”
“The comet’s about a hundred meters, right?” Mathilda said. “The hole is about fifty thousand cubic meters. The comet is five hundred thousand cubic meters. Too big.”
“We had a hard time finding a smaller one,” Tyler said. “And this actually works better. We won’t be sucking in as much rock. And the total volume of ice we’re shooting for is more like ten thousand cubic meters. We’re going to stuff the material we’ve collected on top of it and seal the hole.”
“What’s the point of that?” Steve asked, confused. “So you get a nickel iron asteroid with a nice icy center.”
“Do not tell me that you’re going to balloon it!” Mathilda said. “What was it? Analog in the 1950s? You’re serious?”
“Balloon…” Steve said, then blanched. “So…you stuff ice in the middle…Seal the holes…”
“Heat it up,” Tyler said. “Which is going to need a lot of power. What was that number, Nathan?”
“One point three times ten to the twelfth megajoules,” Dr. Bell said. “Think two hundred and seventy megatons and it makes more sense. Just…doesn’t have to be instantaneous.”
“My God,” Steve said, laughing. “You’re kidding!”
“Got any idea how much power the SAPL is pumping?” Tyler said. “We think it will take about six months. That’s how much. We’ll also have to get it rotating in a ball of twine rotation to get the melt even. When it’s melted, the ice in the middle boils into gas and the asteroid blows up like a balloon. We’re going to have to be careful to get it heated evenly and in a nice, neat sphere before the melt is finished. That’s going to be tough. But doable. We should end up with a ball of nickel iron about ten kilometers across with walls that are about a kilometer thick.”
“What’s the point?” Steve said. “I can understand spinning Connie to pull off the metals, but I don’t get the point of this in mining.”
“Mining?” Tyler said, chuckling. “Who said anything about mining?”
* * *
“We’re getting a lot of solids in there,” Nathan said. “And a lot of the volatiles are being lost to sublimation. They keep blowing the comet off for that matter.”
“It’ll either work or it won’t,” Tyler said over the hypercom. He’d simply had to go back to Earth to stomp out some fires. He always tried to get subordinates who were smarter than he was to handle his various affairs. Dr. Bell was a prime example. That didn’t mean, especially on the business side, that they could intelligently expand upon his generalizations. That had recently become obvious with the space-components side. The Finns were fine. It was the main office in Littleton that was having problems.
With the ongoing threat to the cities, it was getting easier to get quality help in small cities. All you had to do was go to any headhunter and make a decent offer. Tyler had started moving his offices to Littleton before the first orbital bombardment. Mostly it was a matter of convenience. The now defunct, along with its command staff, Lair was near Littleton. Having a place where there were some of “his” people and good meeting facilities meant he wasn’t always having to drive, or more often, take a chopper to Boston.
After New York got hit, he had people hammering on his doors.
But not all of them quite got his vision. In part because he was keeping very quiet about a lot of it. But the requirement had been clear. “Design living and working space for two thousand people that was transportable in stages by space tugs and that could be assembled on site, in microgravity and vacuum conditions, with minimal support. Think in terms of a high quality portable space facility with internal gravity for a Marine Expeditionary unit.”
The Finns had dived into the project with alacrity. But it took a lot of engineering support which meant paying a lot of draftsmen and designers. And Tyler had insisted that they be good draftsmen and designers. This thing really was going to have to go together like Legos.
But while he was off fiddling about in other projects, the bean counters had gotten involved.
“Just keep stuffing,” Tyler said. “Sooner or later it’s going to cool the interior. Then you can weld it.”
“It’s playing hob with our schedule,” Dr. Bell pointed out.
“If you think your personnel can keep their mouths shut, we’ll rotate them out,” Tyler said. “They’ve been out there for nearly a year.”
“I think most of my people want to stay to see this part finished,” Dr. Bell said. “My wife isn’t quite as enthusiastic but she’s enjoying the bonuses.”
“If you’ve got people who can cut and run, let them,” Tyler said. “This is getting too big to keep totally quiet for much longer. I was hoping to wait until it was ballooned to go public. But we may have to do it earlier.”
“What’s the status with the VDA and Ruby?” Nathan asked. “None of this is going to work if we don’t have at least one and preferably both. Among other things, we’re going to need Ruby to do the rest of the project.”
“Not well,” Tyler admitted. “Bryan’s running into some major snags. But we’ll get them worked out. It’s just engineering. The theory’s good.”
“Well, tell him to get a move on. Assuming no more problems with the stuffing, we’re going to be ready to move on to phase two in about a month. After that…well, we’ll just have to see if the models are accurate.”
“Yeah, models,” Tyler said, making a face. “And on that note, I’ve got a meeting. See ya.”
“Take care.”
Tyler cut the hypercom and just sat for a moment, collecting his thoughts.
“I would rather face a thousand deaths…”
* * *
“Gentlemen and ladies,” Tyler said. “Thank you for coming.”
Most of the people in the room either worked for him or were contractors who depended on his business. The people from Lockheed Martin, BAE, Boeing, Honeywell and, especially, the general currently commanding Space Command did not fall into that category.
“Everyone is reminded that this meeting and all information disseminated here is proprietary,” Tyler said. “Recently, my internal people have been asking a lot of questions regarding certain entirely internal expenditures. Some projects that are absorbing an enormous amount of Apollo Mining’s resources, time and money. Some of them don’t make any sense, such as the design work being done by the able firm of STX.” Tyler gave the Finns a nod. “And then there are the proprietary Ruby, VDA and Troy projects.”
“Troy is that asteroid you renamed,” the general said. “That’s a mining project.”
“Which is costing more than the materials we’re extracting,” Apollo’s CFO said. “Mr. Vernon, the thing to remember is that Apollo is now a publicly traded company. You don’t have to deal with the questions from the shareholders. I do.”
“The shareholders are common stock shareholders,” Tyler said mildly. “They bought the shares on the assumption that I would, as I usually do, make out like a bandit and they will get in on it. Troy and the rest are the necessary…infrastructure costs for our next big capital infusion. Which I’m planning on getting from Space Command.”
“How big?” the general asked.
“Big enough it’s going to distort the U.S. government’s budget,” Tyler replied. “Especially if I charge you by the ton. Gentlemen, and ladies, behold…Troy.”
The picture on the plasma screen was of a ball of metal. It rotated through three hundred and sixty degrees and then zoomed in. Small marks could be seen on the surface. As it zoomed closer, it could be seen that they were ports of some sort. Suddenly a door was revealed, a very large, round door. A small vessel, about one tenth the size of the door, was near it. Zooming in, again, it became obvious the tiny little tinker-toy was the still incomplete Constitution.
“Troy,” Tyler said, slowly and lovingly. “Two point two trillion tons of smoking nickel-iron destruction. Exterior diameter of ten kilometers. Interior diameter of eight point five. Walls of refractory stainless steel a kilometer thick. Forget fullerene. The energy needed to scratch Troy exceeds that of the entire Glatun fleet. Room to hold not just two divisions of Marines, not just a fleet of landing craft, not just the estimated ten thousand civilians and military personnel needed to man it but over thirty Constitution-class cruisers. All of those, including the cruisers, snuggled safely away in the very walls that make up this massive battlestation, protected from the sting of battle until Troy has worked its doom upon enemy fleets. And a door…well, the door is going to take ten Constitutions to open and close. You don’t want to know the mass of the door.”
“Oh…my God,” SpaceCom said, leaning back in his chair. “Oh…my…”
“Ja,” the CEO of STX said, laughing and slapping the table. “Yes! Yes! This is magnificent! Now I understand the project! Yes!”
“You don’t think small, do you?” the CEO of BAE snapped. He was clearly incensed to see their most advanced design in battle craft ever upstaged. More like reduced to the value of a handful of peas.
“I think Cheops was insufficiently ambitious,” Tyler said, shrugging.
That produced a series of giggles and guffaws as the sheer enormous, mind-boggling size of the space station sank in. The interior would be nearly four miles across. It wasn’t just huge, it wasn’t just enormous, it was giganormous. The now flattened Great Pyramid would disappear into the interior of Troy. It would be a minor little blip on the interior walls. A pimple on the exterior.
“The Constitutions have a very important job. To say that Troy will not be particularly mobile is the understatement of the millennia. Moving it will require pumped-fusion bombs. For anything that requires maneuvering, you’ll have to have ships. And, at least initially, the weapons of Troy will not be internal.”
“That I don’t get,” the general said.
“We simply cannot make something as powerful as the SAPL,” Tyler said, shrugging. “Not as a stand-alone system. We can’t even make laser emitters as strong as the Horvath have. Yet. And appropriate lasers for Troy…secondary weapons for Troy would be main gun weapons on Glatun dreadnoughts.
“Troy is, essentially, a focus and aiming point for the SAPL. It will draw the power from the SAPL and be the final focus engine while shielding, visually, the critical array components from an attacking enemy.
“We have snags to overcome. To get the full power of the SAPL—and it still won’t be full power because, well, I do keep making those damned mirrors, don’t I—we need some equipment that we’re still designing. A mirror array that can concentrate twenty to fifty, probably more like twenty, medium power VSA clusters and a collimator for managing it within the walls. Essentially twelve hundred terawatts of power. The VSA beams that shredded the Horvath are, by comparison, one hundred and forty. So the near order of ten times as much power. That will penetrate even Glatun shields. We call it the Variable Dialing Array or VDA.”
“The Glatun aren’t a threat,” the BAE representative said.
“And I don’t perceive them ever being a threat,” Tyler said. “The Horvath and Rangora are getting friendlier with each other every day. One can see the Rangora eventually ‘loaning’ the Horvath some of their older fleet units.”
“Which we’ve been looking at,” SpaceCom said, nodding. “And other issues. Yes, I see what you mean by distorting our budget.”
“You’d be surprised,” Tyler said. “I’m not going to sell it to you by the ton. Or nobody could afford it. During the process of making it I’m going to try to extract some useful metals, but the truth is the walls will still have veins of precious metals in them. And while I’ve been working with the Finns on internal systems, you’re going to have to handle most of the…fiddly bits yourself.”
